Henry Barnes

Things to Come is a smart, earnest undertaking: an exploration of the insecurity that can hit any of us, at any age, when we start to question the life we’ve built.

There's a degree of puffery in the writing, however, that makes this drama untrustworthy.

Once you commit to the lexicon – to the blunderbusses, the silver, the loops that close and the loops let run – you're in for a breathless ride. It's been a patchy summer for sci-fi, absent of anything that really sticks in the mind. Johnson's deep, distinctive film plays on repeat.

The Place Beyond the Pines is ambitious and epic, perhaps to a fault.

Red Army is executive produced by Werner Herzog and Polsky borrows some his impishness. He makes sport of the old guard's rebuffs, glories in the occasion when Fetisov gives him the finger. This, he seems to say, is the attitude that made these guys.

The message is laid on slow and thick, but it's no less powerful for it.

A wide-eyed tribute to human ingenuity that packs enough snark to pull itself out of the black hole of earnestness, even if its fuel runs out partway through.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a perfect fit for its target audience – the Harry Potter kids who are following Emma Watson through her baby steps towards the stronger stuff.

A crash reel – a greatest hits of a boarder's most dramatic falls – is meant to entertain. But Walker takes the cheap thrills of the format and flips it painfully on its head.

In picking at a system until it’s threaded, High Flying Bird is a classic Soderbergh construct.

From a subdued start Nightcrawler unfurls into a ghoulish and wickedly funny satire on journalism, the job market and self-help culture.

Vallée, in collaboration with screenwriter Nick Hornby, gives the film its energy by pulling the narrative apart. They create a two-hour hallucinatory montage of the hike and Cheryl's back story that's wound together with the songs, phrases and poetry that she recited to herself as she walked.

For a film that champions talent that takes risks, Frank can sometimes feel a little too conventional. The real Sidebottom's wayward genius would be a hard fit for any story arc, but Frank does a good job of dipping into surrealism and pop in equal measure.

A sequel that is slick with silliness, but peppered with enough wit and peril to sustain the franchise’s momentum.

The adults' behaviour is almost as confusing for us as it is for her. It's a neat trick that reminds us these weighty adult issues are both life-changing and, in the moment, somewhat insignificant to someone Maisie's age.

What Rush has to offer is a great human drama, two dangerously talented men pushing each other to risky victory and a superb script, delivered with some mastery by Hemsworth and Brühl.

It’s a glorious spectacle, but a slight drama, with few characters and too-rare flashes of humour. It wants to awe us into submission, to concede our insignificance in the face of such grand-scale art. It achieves that with ease. Yet on his way to making an epic, Nolan forgot to let us have fun.

It’s all fairly indulgent. But Sunset Song also has a viciousness that stops it falling too deep into a slumber

The chemistry between Mikkelsen and Vikander barely simmers, when it should boil. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating affair of state.

Dunham, who pads through much of this extremely well-written, often funny and very touching film in the semi-nude, doesn't give a damn about any of it.

The Raid 2's faults are not in Evans's technique – he's unusually adept at capturing the art of violence. Instead, the film suffers from too much potential.

Duplass and his co-writer, director Alex Lehmann, deliver this strange concoction – an improv bromance mixed with a tragic love story – with delicacy.

Joe Swanberg's follow-up to Drinking Buddies is short and slight, but undeniably charming.

It's fun to watch Whedon pitch his heroes against each other. Child's play, maybe, but entertaining all the same.

Even if Predestination is distinctive chiefly for Snook’s excellent performance, it’s still a tricksy story well-handled by its directors. It doesn’t offer any new twists on the genre, but it is clever enough to leave you satisfied that you don’t want the time back.

[Jay Roach] wants the film to be fun, while the story is serious. It’s a good idea and an admirable intention. But it does suffer the odd wobble.

There's romance and tragedy, but little depth and no nuance.

The East – a sleek thriller clogged by its noble message – heads south. It becomes sanctimonious, makes you contrary. I left craving a Big Mac.